Greeting Loyal Airmen, here we are again with another Flight Log looking at the culture world for all its beauty and its ugliness.  This week the Air Chief needs to vent a wee bit at the news that the Sci-Fi Channel has canceled easily its finest series ever, ALPHAS!

For two season this show brought us taut, suspenseful tales in an adult perspective on the age-old comic book theory of super-beings.  This was X-Men done realistically, better than of the big-budget films thus far produced.  One of the reasons cited for cancellation was that the show went from 2 million viewers its first season down to only 1 million its second year.  The Air Chief still boggles at this logic. Considering Sci-Fi's less than stellar record, don't these people know 1 million viewers was a freakin' SUCCESS for them?  And the frustration continues in that they not only cancelled the show, but did so in a way that leave's the season two cliff-hanger, which had half the cast left for dead, now forever unresolved.  Had they been kind to their 1 million fans, they would have at least considered a special made-for-TV one shot movie to wrap things up.  No, instead they opted to annoy 1 million fans.  Way to go, Sci-Fi Channel.  Duh.

On a much happier note, writer Roman Leary, a truly talented soul, surprised the Air Chief over the holidays by sending him a book he had been wanting to read and a DVD documentary on the pulp avenger THE SHADOW we didn't even know existed.  See the cover above.  This is a ten-part, two hour documentary explaining the history of this famous character, his creator and all the people who portrayed him both on the radio and in later films. It is truly a fun, informative piece and we can't recommend it highly enough. Again its available at Amazon and thanks Roman, we truly enjoyed this marvelous surprise gift.

Finally we'll end this week's entry with a truly exciting piece of news.  One of the Air Chief's all time favorite horror films is the classic FRANKENSTEIN.  Seen above as portrayed by the great Boris Karloff.  Well, very recently we found an open call for comic creators to contribute either a story or art to a new comic anthology whose theme is the Frankenstein Monster!!  Intrigued by the concept, we wrote the editor of the project and they happily asked us to submit a story idea.  We did, they approved it and gave us the green light to write and submit it.  The Air Chief is wound for sound about this. It will be an eight page tale and after it is approved by the editor, we'll get into talking about who will illustrate it.  Stay tuned, we'll as ever keep you posted.

And that, Loyal Airmen, wraps up another Jan. Flight Log.  Stay well and out of trouble.  Big Brother is watching you.  Oh, Yeah.

Ron – Over & Out!

Greeting Loyal Airmen, things have been busy as ever here at the old Hangar 27.  Still, we do find some time to get away and sneak in a few hours to read a good book or watch movies.  Two of the Air Chief's favorite pastimes.  But before we talk about some movies, old and new, we have a very cool tale to share with you.

Over the years, we've had the good fortune to teach small classes on How To Write Comics.  Early on, in trying to help our students learn the formats of full script writing, we wrote a short four page tale called ROBOT-GUY. It was a humorous ditty paying homage to those wonderful old Golden Age heroes. It featured a robot hero and the lovely scientist, Candace “Candy” Kane who invented him.  We would pass these out to our writing students so they could see first hand how a comic script is written.  Now at the same time we also had the opportunity to expand this course when fortunate enough to hook up with a professional artist. Then the course would double in scope and become a How To Write & Draw Comics class.  Whereas in this course, we actually had everyone, both writers and artists, try their hands at actually drawing the Robot-Guy story. Of course we had no expectations of the writers giving us anything but stick figures, whereas our young artists turned in some really – really cool art pages.

Now one of these art students back in New Hampshire was a talented fellow named David Freeman. Since moving to Colorado we'd stayed connected via Facebook and e-mail, but time, as it always does, rolled on and the Air Chief lost touch with what David was up to. Then two weeks ago David writes to say he recently remembered the old Robot-Guy story he'd had to do in our class. On a whim he decided to draw a pin-up of the characters giving them a fresh look.  He'd since lost the script and his old pages.  Well, what he drew was nothing short of fantastic.  When the Air Chief saw it, he about fell out of his chair. We immediately posted this on Facebook and within hours one of the best inkers in the business, Mark Stegbauer, saw the piece and asked to ink it for us. Wow. Once inked, we re-posted it and then another FB creator, Apriyadi Kusbriantoro asked to color it. We were obviously on a roll.  And finally, our amigo Rob Davis turned in a logo for it.

These folks are now talking of having prints made up of this or even tee-shirts to sell at cons.  Hmmm, we'll give it some thought.  More importantly, the Air Chief convinced David to re-draw that four page story and Mark is on board to ink it.  Once we find a letterer, we are going to get it published in one of our future issues of RON FORTIER'S TALES OF THE MACABRE.  And who knows, there could be a whole new Robot-Guy comic book series in the works.  What do you think?

Getting back to that movie topic, the Air Chief has loved movies ever since he was a little boy. All kinds of movies and we have a very special fondness for the black and white films of the 30s, 40s and 50s.  Thus we were delighted to get the above two collections from Santa this past Christmas.  As most of you know, the Cisco Kid was a western hero created by writer O'Henry and most remember him from the 1950s TV series starring Duncan Reynaldo.  What most don't know is that Monogram did several movies starring the Cisco Kid; some starred Ceasar Romero (the Joker on the Adam West Batman TV show) and while others featured Gilbert Roland. Well, VCI released all six of Roland's Cisco Kid movies in this two disc set.  Having viewed the first two, we are having a blast. Roland plays him with a roguish cavalier quality that is too much fun.  We hope some day VCI does the same with the Romero movies.

The Thin Man was the creation of popular mystery writer Dashiel Hammett.  Written as a stand alone novel, when it came to the big screen with William Powell and Myrna Loy playing the sleuthing Nick & Nora Charles, the movie was a huge success.  Enough so that the studio went back to Hammett urging him to write more screenplays featuring this crime-solving pair and he happily acquiesced, resulting in five more outings for a total of six Thin Man adventures.  This set from Warner Bros. has them all plus a special documentary disc relating the cinema histories of both Powell and Loy.  Believe the Air Chief, no classier detectives ever graced a silver screen than Nick & Nora Charles.

Moving on to the new stuff.  While shopping with Valerie this morning, the Air Chief picked up these new titles, one an action caper starring our favorite tough-guy star, Jason Statham and other a cool looking science fiction story connected with the highly popular HALO video game our grandson, Alex, and millions of other players his age are hooked on. We've been fascinated with this military sci-fi series, though not ourselves gamers, and a few years ago bought the very well made animated Halo movie.  We are anxious to watch both of these and keep our fingers crossed they deliver the fun we think they will.

Finally, the Air Chief this past week was a guest on a very popular internet podcast show called Earth Station One. At one point in the program, one of the host asked if we had any dream we'd yet to realize. Easy question. Loving movies so much, we still hope to one day see something we've written, be it a comic character or pulp hero, brought to life in a movie.  Hey, life is always about reaching for the stars.  If you are going to dream, dream big.  Till next week, be good, be safe and keep on dreaming.

Ron – Over & Out!

Greetings Loyal Airmen to our first Flight Log Entry of the new year.  We trust you all had a great holiday and are all geared up for all the exciting and wonderful things coming down the road in 2013.  Airship 27 Productions has tons of great new titles coming your way and once again the Air Chief and Art Director Rob Davis have been making plans for our convention appearances.  Leading it off will be the Windy City Paper & Pulp Show now in its 13th year.  This will be our seventh year in attendance.  And our first year booking two tables. At last year's show we realized just how much we had grown since starting up over six years ago and with more than fifty titles in our catalog, that one lone table was really getting crowded fast. It was time to bite the bullet, get a second table and spread out our gorgeous books for all attendees to get a really good look at.

Of course this having extra space also opened up a rather fun opportunity for us. You see, three of the writers who penned titles for us last year will be at the show and all of them asked if they could help out in some way.  The more we kept thinking about their generous offer, the more a really cool idea took shape and we contacted the con's promoter asking them if we could schedule “author signings” at the show. To our delight they gave us an enthusiastic thumbs up.

The Windy City Paper & Pulp Show runs from April 12th to the 14th.  On Saturday, April 13th, three of our finest New Pulp writers will be appearing at the Airship 27 Productions table to sell and autograph copies of their wonderful books.

DAVID C. SMITH – CALL OF SHADOWS (11 a.m. to 12 Noon)
JOE BONADONNA – THREE AGAINST THE STARS  (1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m.)
TERRENCE McCAULEY – PROHIBITION (4:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.)

All three of these gentlemen are fantastic writers and eager to meet fellow pulp fans. We truly hope many of our Loyal Airmen will start making plans to come to Chicago and join us for this truly great event.  Note, as we have done in the past three years, we will also be presenting the Pulp Factory Awards for 2012 on Friday evening just prior to the con's big auction.  Will give you more details as we get closer to the show.  And lastly, Rob and the Air Chief has come up with a rather unique Airship 27 “premium” we will be debuting for the first time at the con. Trust me, Loyal Airmen, you are going to love this item.  The Air Chief will give with the full details in the Flight Log prior to the show, so stay tuned.

                                        
                                                  ART BY WILL MEUGNIOT
On the comic side of things, as many of you will recall, over a year ago we put together a giant black and white comic book featuring new strips starring new and classic pulp heroes, it was entitled AIRSHIP 27 Presents ALL STAR COMICS.  It proved to be a big hit and went on to win the Pulp Ark Award for Best Pulp Comic of 2011.  Well, over the past year, Rob Davis and the Air Chief have slowly been accumulating another half dozen of truly gorgeous new strips for a second volume of ALL STAR PULP COMICS.  This one will feature such characters as Ki-Gor the Jungle Lord and his mate, Helene.  That's her above, fighting alongside Derrick Ferguson's pulp hero, Dillon.  This beautiful cover art was provided for us by pro artist Will Meugniot. Beside these two characters, you'll find a Lance Star – Sky Ranger story, a Brother Bones tale and several others.  Issue one truly set the quality bar high and we were determined to either equal or surpass it with this second issue.  As it nears completion, will give you more information on how to snag a copy.

And that's it for this first Flight Log of 2013, Loyal Airmen.  As you can see, things are shaping up to be an exciting year head, that is our continued wish for all of you.  And ever thanks for stopping by and your wonderful support,

Ron – Over & Out!

Greetings Loyal Airmen, we trust you and your families had a super Christmas and that Santa was extra wonderful to all of you. Christmas morning our Christmas Tree was nearly buried under brightly packaged boxes all full of wonderful surprises.  Among those for the Air Chief was a Star Trek Enterprise pizza-cutter. We kid you not. That had to be the wildest surprise of all. There were several new Blu-ray DVD movies to include the new MIB3 (Men In Black) which we watched the following night and enjoyed immensely. A truly fun sci-fi flick. Oh, can't forget my Green Lantern Pez dispenser.  Too cool.  Aviation wise the Air Chief received a die-cast model of a Mustang P-47-D made famous by the Red Tails (The African American Squadron) that flew in World War II.  It now sits on my writing desk.  And of course lots and lots of other cool things.  Santa must have known the Air Chief was a “good boy” in 2012.

Hard to believe we are only a few days away from saying to goodbye to yet another year.  2013 is just around the calendar.  Guess those poor Mayans weren't as good at predictions as they were in pyramid building.  Oh, well. Time does march on, as you can see by the image above.  We've been refitting the old Airship 27 and getting her ready to fly longer and higher in the New Year.  We've tons of great books in store for all you pulp lovers out there.

                                            
One of those projects now in the works will be our very first PHANTOM DETECTIVE anthology.  See Rob Davis' marvelous sketch above.  If the name sounds famaliar it is because he truly was one of the more popular classic pulp heroes with his own monthly magazine. The thing about him that most people recall is how they would portray him on the covers in a silk top hat and tuxedo.  Pretty silly when one thinks about it and the truth is he never ever appeared in that ridiculous outfit in the actual stories in the mag.  Rather he wore top coat and fedora with a domino mask just as Rob has drawn him here. We are excited about doing this fan favorite and have assembled what we consider the cream-of-the-crop amongst today's New Pulp writers to bring you his new adventures. They include Barry Reese, Derrick Ferguson, Tommy Hancock and Gary Lovisi; with illustrations by Mr. Davis of course.  We truly think this is going to be of our shining stars of the new year. Stay tuned.

                                         
                                     SHERLOCK HOLMES sketch by Chad Hardin

Another tradition here at Airship 27 Productions is starting each new year with a new Sherlock Holmes book.  We've done ever since we started the company and its been kind of our good luck tradition and 2013 will certainly not break that chain.  Our first title of the new year will be our forth volume of SHERLOCK HOLMES  Consulting Detective; easily our most popular series sales-wise.  The first three books in this series continue to sell and have never diminished in popularity all attesting to the love for these characters shared by fans around the world.  Volume Four will sport a painted cover by the amazing Chad Hardin; above is his preliminary sketch and we love it.  Trust the Air Chief, the finished, colored piece is beautiful.  So that what you have to look forward to in just a few weeks, Loyal Airmen, five brand new adventures of Holmes and Watson brought to you by the folks who put high adventure back into fiction.

And finally, as many of you know, the Air Chief writes a book review column, PULP FICTION REVIEWS (see the link in the heading paragraph above).  Recently we read and reviewed “Archie Meets Nero Wolfe” by Robert Goldsborough.  Being big time fans of the original Rex Stout Nero Wolfe books, we were delighted that Goldsborough took it upon himself to go back in time and tells us the story of how two of mystery fictions characters met for the very first time.  This book is so enjoyable, we can't recommend enough and hope you'll check it out.

That's it, Loyal Airmen, again, thanks for stopping by and for all your continued support. It means to world to us. Happy New Year to you and yours, party wisely, never ever drink and drive….please, we want you here for here next week. Till then, be good and God bless you all.

Ron – Over & Out!

Greetings Loyal Airmen and here we go with out last Flight Log before Christmas.  We hope you've all been enjoying n the holiday festivities with your friends, families and other loved ones. It truly is a wonderful time of the year.  Here in Fort Collins, we finally got some snow yesterday and though it really wasn't much, at least it gave the landscape that Christmas look.

At the end of lasts week, Airship 27 Productions released its 16th and final book of the year.  It's a humdinger of a gangster novel set in New York in the 1930s and was written by Terrence McCauley.  The art provided for both the nine interior illustrations and that gorgeous color cover you see above were all the work of Scottish artist Rob Moran who has an affinity for these kinds of noir gangster images.  We should also note that the gorgeous coloring provided for this image was done by artist Shannon Hall, another regular here at Hangar 27 and the design, logo etc. were the efforts of our loyal Art Director, Rob Davis.   PROHIBITION is available form our website as a PDF download and from Amazon as a hard copy and through them for Kindle.  So as you can see there are multiple ways to obtain a copy.  We hope you'll check it out and as ever thanks for your support.

Sixteen titles in one year!!  Kind of hard to wrap our heads around it.  Truly a great year all around with some awesome titles we're all very, very proud of.

Tomorrow, Friday 21st, the Air Chief is heading to the Coyote Ridge grade school here in Fort Collins to two presentations to the 5th grad classes there on How To Create Comics.  It's the kids' last day of school before getting out for the holidays and their teachers, Ms.Campbell and Mrs.Yenny were kind enough to invite me to be a guests and make it a fun event. The Air Chief loves doing these kind of school visits.

And finally here for each and every one of you Loyal Airmen is our annual photo Christmas Card.  Valerie and the Air Chief wish each and everyone one of you the BEST holidays ever.  Please be careful when traveling and we hope Santa leaves tons of wonderful surprises under all your Christmas Trees.  Be good, be happy and we'll see you all back here next week for our final entry of the year.

MERRY CHRISTMAS – Ron – Over & Out!

                   
                                            A SURPRISE HOLIDAY GIFT
Greetings Loyal Airmen and welcome to this week's Flight Log.  We mentioned recently that the Air Chief had come down with a kidney infection a few weeks back and was happily getting better due to the antibiotics the doctor prescribed for us.  Earlier this week a small gift-wrapped box arrived in the mail from Loyal Airmen John Bodnar. John's a good friend who has been a huge supporter of Airship 27 Productions from day one, to buy our books and stopping by our table at the Windy City Paper & Pulp show in past years. An all around great guy.  So we open his surprise gift and find a custom made Airship 27 Christmas Tree Ornament.

                 
                                         THE AIRSHIP 27 ORNAMENT TAKES FLIGHT
And here it is hanging up in our living room Christmas Tree, up front in a place where all can see it.  John, you did an awesome job with this and we will treasure it for ever.  Thank so you very, very much.

           
                       THE AIR CHIEF, KRISTINE KRAUSS & BEN WOLF
On another truly happy note, we wrapped up our first ever How To Write Comics Class at the local comic shop here in Fort Collins, Gryphons Games & Comics, last Sunday afternoon.  Amazing just how fast eight weeks seemed to fly by for us. We snapped the above photo in the main room of the shop before parting.  Kristine and Ben are truly super talented writers and we are sure the little technical things we taught them about writing comics professionally will help them both achieve their dreams of becoming published writers. And even though the course itself is over, we will be staying in touch with our new proteges and have already begun planning a self-published comic title that will feature their works.  So tuned, more on that project as it develops. And thank you Kristine & Ben for your hard work and making this experience so rewarding for the Air Chief.

                            
                                 NEW FROM DYNAMITE COMICS
Finally we wanted to tell all you Loyal Airmen about an exciting new pulp-comic mini-series that has just debut at Dynamite Comics.  For the past several years, Dynamite has become a leader in doing comics based on classic radio and pulp heroes from the 1930s.  From the Lone Ranger to Tarzan, the Green Hornet, the Spider and the Shadow, Dynamite has really put out some excellent titles featuring this great classic heroes and is presenting them to a whole new generation of fans.  Well now comes the pulp cross-over series we've all dreamed of, sort of a pulp version of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.  Written by talented Chris Roberson with art, on this first issue, by the great Alex Ross, this tale brings together the Shadow, the Green Hornet & Kato, the Spider, the Black Bat, Zorro and Ms.Fury in a stupendous battle against an corrupt organization that has taken control of New York City and holding it and its citizens in a might grip of fear.  Now only these masked vigilantes can save the city by banding together to bring justice to those evil doers who would hide behind the law.  Issue one is great and we can't wait for the rest of the series. We give it major thumbs up, Loyal Airmen.

And there you go for another week at Hangar 27.  Take care, stay safe and remember, through the hubbub of this frantic holiday season, to recognize the greatest gifts you already possess, your loved ones. God bless you all.
Ron – Over & Out!

Greetings Loyal Airmen, well here were are for another installment of our Flight Log with both good and bad things to report.  Last week, feeling poorly, the Air Chief, at Valerie's nudging, went in to see his doctor. We were expecting to be told we had a bad case of the flu. Not so. As it turned out we discovered we actually had a very bad kidney infection and had we not stopped in for that visit, we most likely would have ended up in a hospital a few days later.  So happily that was averted and we were put on a very high dosage antibiotics treatment that will last for thirty days. In the meanwhile we are going back in to see the doctor for a follow up and to make sure the drugs are working to clear things up.  Quite honestly, we are feeling a whole lot better and are again extremely grateful to Val for getting us in to see the doctor when we did.  Spending the holidays in a hospital bed would have been no fun at all. Ha.

                              
                                        WRITER JOE BONADONNA
Just a little over a week ago, Airship 27 Productions released its 15ht book of the year, a space opera entitled THREE AGAINST THE STARS by Chicago based author, Joe Bonadonna.  Well Joe was so thrilled with how his terrific book came out ( a tip of the hat to Art Director Rob Davis ) he had this photo snapped of himself with his books when they arrived.  The dazzling cover is by the truly gifted Laura Givens and the interior art is by Portuguese artist Pedro Cruz.  We hope you'll pick up a copy either at Amazon (& on Kindle) or at our (www.Indyplanet.com) site as well.  Its truly a rousing sci-fi adventure.

                                 
                                                       THE AIR CHIEF IS READY FOR BEAR!!
Speaking of artist Pedro Cruz, the above image of the Air Chief by Pedro is from a new Zone 4 Comic Book that is now in production. Pedro illustrated one of the strips in the book and that panel is part of his gorgeous work. Note the final comic, when it is available early next year will be in full color.  Anyway, during the past weekend, dealing with my illness, the Air Chief was doing his best to stay optimistic and smiling.  Then out of the blue comes this truly great e-mail from Pedro asking if we would be interested in creating a brand new comic book graphic novel with him?  Trust me, it didn't take us long to answer in the affirmative.  Pedro is such a great artist, we hurriedly sent him half a dozen ideas that have been gathering dust in our files and he immediately latched on to one and said, “Let's do this one.”  Note, the idea Pedro chose is based on an historical event and our graphic novel will tell a “true story” many of you are going to be amazed by.  It's one the Air Chief has been waiting to tell like this for many, many years.  And now we've got the chance. Stay tuned for further development as it all starts to come together; from idea to conception.

                     CHARACTER SKETCHES BY ARTIST JOE ARNOLD
And finally, this coming Sunday the Air Chief will be giving his eight and final class in his HOW TO WRITE COMICS which has been going on at the local comic shop here in Fort, Collins, Gryphon Games & Comics. This will be our last meeting with our students Kristine & Ben and to help brighten the occasion, once again local artist Joe Arnold did up two more very cool drawings based on characters from their respective stories done in the class. The past few months working with these two imaginative young people has been a pure joy for the Air Chief.  Both Kristine & Ben are great writers and you can fully expect to see their comic stories coming your way soon. That's a prediction we make with confidence.

And there you have for another week, Loyal Airmen. Thanks as ever for stopping by, be careful out there this holiday season, lots of people rushing to and fro to get their last minute gift-buying done. Take a second to be a little more cautious so all of you can be around come Christmas morning to join in the fun.
Ron – Over & Out!

Greetings, Loyal Airmen.  It certainly has been a unusually busy week at Hangar 27 HQ.  And wouldn't you know it, the Air Chief got sidelined by a case of the flu two days ago.  Yup, those old familiar aches and pains. Yuk. Been getting lots of bed rest, drinking tons of fluids and praying it will pass in a few more days.  So please excuse the brevity of this entry.

As you'll recall, The Boston Bombers something that Redbud Studio published two years ago and then went on to win the Pulp Ark Award for 2010 for Best Pulp Comic.  But up until now the only place you could get a copy of this fast paced sci-pulp adventure was through Redbud's website on-line.  Now, the good people of Wild Wolf Entertainment, especially their Managing Editor, Sean Collins, in conjunction with Redbudy, have put out their own edition and IT IS AVAILABLE right now at both Amazon and Barnes & Noble on-line.  We couldn't be happier.  Check it out if you haven't done so already.

At long last, the every first Captain Hazzard book I wrote way back in 2006 is now available as four and a half hour audio book thanks to the creative people at Dynamic Ram Audio.  The book is read by stage actor Joe Stofko and he does a truly great job with it.  You can download a copy by going to our webstore.  Hopefully by next year we'll have CD editions to sell at cons.  (Note – We inadvertently put down the name of another audio company, BrokenSea Audio. A dumb mistake that will be corrected.  Again, the audio book was produced by Dynamic Ram Audio.  Sorry about that.)
(http://robmdavis.com/Airship27Hangar/index.airshipHangar.html#PythonAudio)

And last but certainly not least, we have just released our 15th Airship 27 Productions title of the year, THREE AGAINST THE STARS; a rollicking Space Opera action-packed novel by Joe Bonadonna.  It features a stunning cover Laura Givens and interior illos by Pedro Cruz.  The book is available right now as a $3 download on our Airship 27 Production website.

Hard copies can be had at Amazon's Create Space (https://www.createspace.com/4072461)  In another week it should be up at Amazon proper and also Kindle.  And in another two weeks you'll be able to pick up a cheaper copy at (www.IndyPlanet.com).  We've said it before, this has been a banner year production wise for Airship 27 and we aren't done yet.  We've got one more title coming in another two weeks.  Stay tuned.

Thanks as ever for stopping by and all your support, Loyal Airmen.  Now the Air Chief is going to go and get some chicken soup.
Ron -Over & Out!

                                         

Greeting Loyal Airmen, as you are reading this, Thanksgiving has come and gone and many of you are probably caught up in the Black Friday shopping frenzy. First of all, let me say the Air Chief hopes all of you and your loved ones had a great day yesterday, ate lots of good food and said thanks for all your blessings.  We here at Hangar 27 HQ consider all our Loyal Airmen a blessing. We couldn't do what we do without your continued support, so God bless each and everyone one of you during this wonderful season.

So now, let's see what the Air Chief's been up to, beside stuffing himself with delicious goodies.  How about our latest writing project which we just put THE END to a few days ago.  It seems like for the past several weeks we've been surrounded by Tough Guys.

                                       
                                                Actors Lloyd Nolan & Jan Wiley

Being the movie buff that he is, the Air Chief has always loved the gangster movies and those Private Eye thrillers that exemplified the black and white movies of the 1940s & 50s.  Cruel mobsters, hot women, Tommy Guns, car chases and non-nonsense G-Men.  All were iconic characters in many Warner Brothers movie featuring actors like Edward G.Robinson, James Cagney, Humphrey and Lloyd Nolan seen in the picture above.  So when writers Bobby Nash & Sean Taylor created a new tough-guy Shamus from the 1930s named Rick Ruby and inquired as to whether Airship 27 Productions would like to chronicle his exploits, we totally jumped at the chance and earlier in the year released the first volume of THE RUBY FILES.

Along with Bobby & Sean, writers Andrew Salmon William Maynard joined the party and contributed stories,
and thus we had our four stories.  Mark Wheatley provided the cover, Art Director Rob Davis did up the
back cover and off to the presses we went.  Oh, and let me not forget, providing the amazing interior illustrations
was a new discovery for us, artist Rob Moran.

The book did extremely well for us and immediately Bobby & Sean began discussing a sequel. Along that time
Sean dropped me a line and knowing of my enthusiasm for the character suggested the Air Chief write a Rick
Ruby story.  Now, having been the Managing Editor of Airship 27 Productions, we had written our own novels
and story collections from the Captain Hazzard books to the Brother Bones volume but the one thing we had
never done was contribute a story to a regular anthology such as this.  Still, the temptation to play in this world of
tough guys was too great to pass up and we accepted Sean's gracious offer.  Earlier this week we wrapped up
a Rick Ruby story entitled THE LONG KILL which will see the light of day sometime in 2013, so stay tuned.
We had a blast writing it and hope you'll enjoy it.  THE RUBY FILES Vol II will also feature a story by Alan
Porter and another each from Bobby & Sean.  Looks to be another great package.

                                 
                                             Illustration by Ron Moran

Now you'll recall we mentioned the artist who provided the interior illustrations for THE RUBY FILES was Rob Moran.  Above his one of those gorgeous piece.  Rob has a truly love of those old black and white gangster movies and was the perfect choice to round out this book's creative team.  People who've seen his art are just bowled away.  About the same time we were releasing this book, a New York writer named Terrence McCauley submitted a gangster novel to us called PROHIBITION that took place in the 1930s.  After reading the first few chapters, we gladly accepted it for publication, although we weren't sure it would see print this year.
While editing this superior work, we kept remembering Rob Moran's work and knew once again he would be the one and only artist to do justice to McCauley's tough guy yarn.  So eventually we approached him and much to our delight, Rob agreed to take on the assignment and promised to being work on it starting in November.

So here we are, almost done the month and we are thrilled to announce Rob not only honored his commitment and has completed nine truly wonderful pieces but since then agreed to do our cover as well.  Rob Davis and the Air Chief couldn't be any happier.  And so it looks like PROHIBITION  will be out some time in mid-Dec, making it our 16th title of the year.  Before it, we've still got a super-duper space opera called THREE AGAINST THE STARS coming your way in just another few weeks.  Sixteen titles in one year!!  A new record for Airship 27 Productions.  Not too bad for just two guys with a fondness for the old pulps.

So that's how the Air Chief has kicked off his holiday season, with turkey and tough-guys. And has loved every bit of it. Stay tuned for more info as the book nears publication and as ever, thanks so much for stopping by.  Be safe out there and see you back here next Friday.
Ron – Over & Out!

Greetings Loyal Airmen, it looks like the year is whipping past us are warp speed.  Here it is the middle of November already.  The month began with my mother's birthday, four days later it was mine, then earlier this week our granddaughter Krisit turned 21 and yesterday it was Valerie's mother's turn.  Then on the 27 of the month, my baby sister Ann will turn 56.  As you can see, the month of November is rather big birthday-wise in our family. Ha.

The big news here at Hangar 27 is the release and availability of our third Brother Bones audio adventure as produced by Dynamic Ram Audio in conjunction with our Airship 27 Productions.  Once again voice actor Mark Kality does a tremendous job in reading this tale of terror wherein the Undead Avenger, Brother Bones takes on weird Lovecraft like alien monsters in a story written by the Air Chief.  It is only $2 a download on our website (http://robmdavis.com/Airship27Hangar/index.airshipHangar.html#brotherbones)  So please stop on by and check it out.  Ultimately all seven of the Bones story from that first book collection will get this audio treatment.  Reports from other Loyal Airmen who have downloaded the previous two stories have all been most positive.  No surprises there. Dynamic Ram does a great, quality job here.

Finally this week we wanted to give a tip of our pulp fedora to a TV show both Val and the Air Chief have been enjoying a great deal.  It's ELEMENTARY, the fun, modern re-imagining of Arthur Conan Doyle's detective hero, Sherlock Holmes set against the backdrop of today's New York City with a lovely female Dr. Watson played by Lucy Liu.  British actor Jonny Lee Miller takes on the role of the eccentric Holmes who helps the police in a consulting capacity.  The shows are fast paced, extremely well written with the just the right balance of both humor and drama.  Miller & Liu have the perfect chemistry together and it is lots of fun watching their friendship and mutual admiration for each grow week to week.  Of course this isn't a traditional take on the character, but that is no reason to ignore it outright.  Accept it for what it is, a variation and just have fun with it. You might be, like us, pleasantly surprised.

And there you have our ramblings for this week, Loyal Airmen.  As ever thanks so much for stopping by.
Ron – Over & Out!